


Take Two (Are You In Love With Me?)

by LadySokolov



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Telltale Series (Video Game)
Genre: Love Confessions, M/M, vigilante john
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 20:46:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13621365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySokolov/pseuds/LadySokolov
Summary: After the events of The Enemy Within, Bruce and John have another conversation about love, and this time they come to a much more satisfying conclusion.





	Take Two (Are You In Love With Me?)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Avellyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avellyn/gifts).



John let out one last exhausted-sounding chuckle and then practically collapsed onto the floor. Soon he was laying there spread-eagled, staring up at the ceiling of the Batcave with a contented smile on his face.

Bruce wiped some of the sweat off his brow and walked over to sit on the floor beside his partner.

The two of them had just spent the last couple of hours engaged in what had been a rather intense training session, but after teaching John a few new moves and engaging in a few mock fights they had both reached their limits, at least for the time being.

Bruce decided that it was nice to finally have someone that he could go toe to toe with in training. He knew for a fact that John wasn’t the only one who was benefitting from sessions like the one they had just had. Bruce hadn’t felt so simultaneously exhausted and satisfied after a training session in years.

John looked over at Bruce and started to giggle again. It was a happy giggle rather than a nervous one, and Bruce found himself smiling back at the other man.

Before long they were laying side by side on the floor of the Batcave, staring up at the ceiling. A little way away the cave’s resident bat population started to chitter and stir as the night began to fall.

“Hey Bruce?” John asked. “Have you ever been in love? I mean, not just really, really liking a person, but actually being madly, hopelessly in love? The sort of crazy, all-consuming love that makes people write love songs and poetry and stuff.”

Bruce smiled at John and shuffled so that his side and John’s were almost touching.

“I have,” he confessed.

“With Cat Lady, right?” John asked, staring up at the ceiling. One of the bats let out a loud squeal at that moment, causing a few of its neighbors to let out squeals of their own and flap their wings before settling back down again.

“No,” Bruce replied. “I mean, I care about Catwoman, but I’m not in love with her. At least, not the sort of love you’re talking about.”

John tore his attention away from the bats to look at Bruce. Their eyes met for a few seconds. John’s gaze was so intense that had he been anyone else Bruce wouldn’t have been able to maintain the eye contact and would have looked away immediately. As it was he just found himself staring into John’s eyes for those few seconds, barely able to breathe until John tore his gaze away from Bruce’s and turned his attention back to the roof of the cave.

“So you’re in love with someone else then?” John said.

“Yeah,” Bruce replied.

John didn’t ask who. Bruce supposed that was a small mercy, although part of him wished that John _would_ ask. A direct question like that might have been enough to force Bruce to stop second-guessing himself and finally confess his feelings to John.

John reached out, his hand pressing against Bruce’s own. Bruce moved his own hand a little in response, and before long their fingers had entwined with one another.

For a while neither of them said anything. They just lay there together on the floor, and Bruce realized that it must have been the longest time in a very long while that he had allowed himself to just exist, without worrying about some wrong that needed to be righted or the work that he needed to do. It might have been the first time that he had ever felt this peaceful just being quiet and alone with another person.

He felt John squeeze his hand, and then the other man was rolling over to face Bruce. Bruce smiled as he got another look at his partner’s face. John’s makeup had smudged during training, leaving a bright red streak of lipstick that arched up all the way to one of John’s pale cheeks.

Part of Bruce wanted to reach out and wipe away the smudge of lipstick, but the rest of him was too busy admiring how perfect it seemed, sitting there on John’s face; the perfect expression of the color and chaos that John had brought into Bruce’s life, and oh, Bruce wouldn’t change that for the world.

“How do you know?” John asked.

It took a while for Bruce to realize what John was asking.

“How do you know that you’re really in love?” Bruce asked.

“I suppose,” John asked. “I don’t know. I’m just…”

He sighed, and it wasn’t until Bruce gave the hand that was entwined with his own a comforting squeeze that John continued to speak.

“I’m just trying to make sense out of things right now,” John said.

“You think you might be in love?” Bruce asked.

He felt his heart sink. There weren’t all that many people in John’s life that Bruce didn’t also know. He hoped that John wouldn’t tell him who it was that had managed to capture his attention and possibly his heart this time, because Bruce didn’t want to end up hating him or her (probably ‘her’ knowing John) for something that wasn’t his or her fault.

“Yeah,” John replied. “Maybe. I don’t know. It feels different than it did with Harley.”

“Well, why don’t you tell me how it feels?” Bruce suggested.

“You promise you won’t laugh?” John asked.

“I promise,” Bruce said.

He brought up his left hand, the one that wasn’t already entwined with John’s own, and held up one crooked pinky finger.

‘Pinky swear,’ the gesture said, even if Bruce’s words did not. It had become something of a running… well, not joke. Certainly not joke. The sacred pinky swear was nothing to joke about. It was an unspoken promise and a reminder of the bond that existed between them.

John smiled at Bruce and gave his hand another squeeze. Bruce could feel the other man’s pinky curling around against the skin of his hand as John returned Bruce’s promise in his own subtle way.

John took a deep breath then, and began to speak.

“I guess it’s complicated,” John said. “When I’m around them I’m always afraid that I’m going to say or do the wrong thing. I guess that part at least feels like it did with Harley. I was always kind of scared of disappointing her, but this is… I don’t know. Different. Around… well, around this other person I want to be the best person that I can possibly be, if only so that I can see them smile and know that I was the one who caused it, and I know I’d just hate myself if I ever let them down, but at the same time I’m not scared of them. And I’d do anything, anything at all to stop them from getting hurt. That bit _is_ kind of scary, actually, knowing how far I’d go to protect them.

“And you know, despite all of that worry, being around them is still the best feeling in the world. I can just relax and be myself, more than I can with anyone else. They know how messed up I am, and they don’t care, and I know they’re not perfect either, but that doesn’t matter. Even their rough edges make me smile.”

Bruce felt his heart aching as John spoke. He knew exactly what John meant, mostly because everything John said described Bruce’s feelings for John perfectly.

“That sounds like love to me,” Bruce said, when he was finally sure that he would be able to speak without choking up.

“Really?” John asked, turning his head and looking directly into Bruce’s eyes.

“Yeah,” Bruce said, giving John’s hand a squeeze. “Whoever it is that you’re in love with, they’re a very lucky person.”

“I don’t know about that,” John chuckled.

Bruce gave John’s hand another squeeze, and rolled over a little so that he was also lying on his side, facing John while they continued to talk.

“I mean, not because of me liking them,” John said with a chuckle. “He’s just been through the wringer a lot lately, and well, I haven’t exactly made things any easier for him.”

Bruce could have sworn that he felt his heart stop beating in that moment. ‘Him.’ John had definitely said ‘him.’

“And you know something Bruce? Despite everything I’ve put him through he’s stayed right by my side this whole time.”

John pulled their entwined hands up to rest closer to both of their heads. He then squeezed Bruce’s hand and looked at him, their eyes meeting, and there could be no doubting it now, although Bruce could still hardly believe it.

John seemed to be talking about _Bruce_.

It was more than he ever could have hoped for, more emotion in one swelling heartbeat than he knew how to process, and for a long time they just lay there, staring into one another’s eyes. Their hands stayed entwined, neither of them trying, even for a moment, to pull away.

“John,” Bruce finally whispered, finding, as he spoke, that his throat was drier than he had thought it would be.

“Are you… um,” Bruce began, even more nervous to ask this particular question than he had been the first time. “Are you in love with me?”

John’s mouth shifted into a definite grin then. He shuffled a little closer to Bruce, and made sure to capture Bruce’s gaze with his own again before answering.

“Seems like it, huh?”

Bruce wasted no time. Without letting go of John’s hand he propped himself up so that he could lean over John, and pressed a long, loving kiss to John’s lips.

“I love you too,” he said when they parted.

Bruce felt like it had taken a very long time for him to be able to say those four simple words.


End file.
